Procurement Observatory Uttar Pradesh (India)

About the Procurement Observatory

Better procurement practices can bring benefits in terms of greater competition, transparency and fairness along with reduction in corruption and costs. To promote these objectives, the procurement observatory was established in July 2013 with active support from the World Bank Group. The observatory provides a platform to observe procurement processes and advocate better practices by initiating dialogue among relevant stakeholders. It pursues qualitative and quantitative analysis of the procurement processes across various Indian states and shares it with government officers and citizens through this portal, blogs, tweets, newsletters, workshops and training sessions. By observing procurement process and advocating better procurement practices, it aims to encourage significant savings and bring in efficiency.

What do we do?

The observatory was initially supported by funding from the World bank but has since moved on to a self-funded engagement model wherein it provides consultancy, capacity building and training services to various public and private organizations.

Consulting: We have been engaged by various agencies such as the World Bank Group, Indian Army, U P Power Corporation Ltd., etc to improve their existing procurement process. Through these assignments we have helped our clients in either redesigning their entire procurement process or execute it better by providing support on supplier evaluation or improving the bid documents. The consulting assignments are governed by IIM Lucknow consulting guidelines available here.

Training: We offer procurement training programs to the public and private sectors on a regular basis. We have signed an MoU with the World Bank Group to bring in their technical expertise in our training programs. These training programs are either open program at IIM Lucknow or tailor made for a particular organization delivered at its preferred location. Click here for the upcoming open training program at IIM Lucknow.

Advocacy and Advisory: The observatory continuously engages in the advocacy and advisory roles on various topics such as competition, fairness, transparency and integrity, policy formulation, monitoring and implementation. These assignments are small duration engagements carried out without any charges. In the past, we have helped Uttar Pradesh State Planning Institute in developing and delivering training programs, Urban Transport Department Government of Uttar Pradesh in preparing tender documents and contributed in preparing goods procurement policy for the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Observatory Team

Prof. Amit Agrahari is a faculty of information systems at IIM Lucknow. He is a fellow of XLRI, Jamshedpur and pursued his graduation in statistics. Before joining IIM Lucknow, he worked with Infosys Technologies Ltd., where he was leading research on process innovation and optimization. (Profile)

Prof. Samir K Srivastava is a faculty of operations management at IIM Lucknow. He is a fellow of Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIML) and earned his graduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University. He also holds an M.B.A. in Finance. He worked for more than two decades in various positions in industry (AV Birla Group) in technical as well as management roles before plunging back full-time in academics. (Profile)

Associate Members

Dr Ashish Dwivedi is the deputy director of the center for system studies at Hull University Business School in the UK. He was awarded a PhD in knowledge management by Coventry University in 2004. He also holds masters degrees (MBA and MSc – IT for Management), both of which were awarded with distinction from Bhopal University, India, and Coventry University, UK.

Santhanam Krishnan worked as executive director (stores) in the Ministry of Railways, Government of India and has 15 years experience as lead procurement specialist/ consultant with the World Bank. He holds Bachelor of Engineering ( B.E ) Mechanical Engineering and Bachelor of Law, LLB.

Commandant Usha Gaur isa serving officer with Indian Coast Guard, Ministry of Defence. She has over 19 years of experience in revenue procurement including ration, general purpose stores and spares etc. A physics graduate from queen mary's college, chennai, she also holds an MBA in logistics management from Goa University.

Contact us

In case you would like to visit the observatory, participate in workshop or collaborate with us, please feel free to talk to us.

Procurement Observatory for the State of Uttar PradeshIndian Institute of Management, Prabandh Nagar, Off Sitpur Road, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India05222736631/ 05222736667amit at iiml.ac.in / Samir at iiml.ac.in(Please replace at with @)